Hola, nice to meet you.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my website. I am Colombian-Spanish researcher. Currently working as Lecturer in Spatial Data Science at the School of Geography and Sustenable Development in The University of St Andrews.
My research sits at the intersection of Urban Analytics, Geography and Computer Science. I’m interested in developing new spatially enriched computational methods to better understand the relationship between human behaviors (in some cases movement or interactions) and their environmental impact. My work has been focused in the potential of spatial data and the integration with other type and traditional forms of data to provide evidence of urban dynamics but with a particular emphasis on inform policy making.
Previously, I worked as research associate in 2021 at The Alan Turing Institute as part of the AI for science and government (ASG) initiative, particularly working in the Urban Analytics Team & Shocks and Resilience to develop spatial modelling methods that can be integrated within the epidemiologic-socio-economic models to tackle policy questions that are relevant at the national or local level.
I did my PhD in Geoinformatics (obtained in 2018) at the Universitat Jaume I - Spain, under the supervision of Dr Joaquín Huerta. In 2020, I held a research fellowship at the University of Jaume I to use machine learning techniques to characterize the urban mobility patterns in medium-size cities using remote sensing data sources. In 2019, I worked with Dr Urška Demšar as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews, to develop a novel data fusion method to annotate Earth’s magnetic field data from satellite and terrestrial sources to GPS trajectories - MagGeo.
I also have experience in the private sector, as I worked for several years as former development and business partner manager, and head of geographic innovation team in Esri-Colombia.
Learn more about my research interests and publications in the research and project sections. Contact me if you wish to collaborate, contribute or have a chat about a particular nice idea related to my research interests.
Projects
Uncovering the Mechanisms of Migratory Bird Navigation with Big Data Analytics.
Lead by Dr Urška Demšar, I supported the developing of MagGeo a novel data fusion method to link remote sensing data from the European Space Agency-ESA mission (Swarm) with animal movement trajectories. This exciting and multidisciplinary project attempts to combine Ecology with GISience methods to study how birds in particular long distance migrants use Earth’s magnetic field for navigation.
Read morePublications
Fusion of wildlife tracking and satellite geomagnetic data for the study of animal migration
We developed a novel data fusion method that helps researchers link Earth magnetic field data from satellites to GPS trajectories of tracked animals. This paper describes the technical process to of combining geomagnetic data (from European Space Agency Swarm satellites) with animal tracking data using a new spatio-temporal interpolation method. The tool was developed in Python. This is the first tool of this kind, and we hope it can help ecologists better understand how wildlife response to short-term variations on the geomagnetic field.
Read more